Adaptive Leadership Research Articles

Leadership 4.0 From Ego-system to Eco-system:Framing a New Form of Adaptive Leadership as an Individual and Co-creative Process

Leadership 4.0 From Ego-system to Eco-system:Framing a New Form of Adaptive Leadership as an Individual and Co-creative Process

Authenticity and Accountability: Key to an Appreciative Stance to Adaptable Leadership

Authenticity and Accountability: Key to an Appreciative Stance to Adaptable Leadership

The Diary of an Adaptive Change Agent: The Working Reality of Adaptive Leadership

The Diary of an Adaptive Change Agent: The Working Reality of Adaptive Leadership

Collaborative practitioner research: opening a third space for local knowledge production

Early childhood education and care is currently experiencing unprecedented policy interest and expansion. This policy and practice landscape requires new forms of adaptive leadership, new spaces for production of the knowledge necessary for this changing context, and tools that can support the development of leadership qualities. This paper examines the potential of practitioner research to produce contextually relevant knowledge and to develop leadership capacity. Our findings show that collaborative practitioner research groups provide a relatively safe environment for the sharing of dilemmas and critical reflections. The practitioners who participated in this research wanted access to narratives of change in typically resourced early childhood contexts as well as in the more highly resourced settings that are more often reflected in academic research and literature. This suggests there is a need for much more of this work to be publicly available. These groups can generate the courage required to open practice based research to public critique. This, we argue is an important element of activist leadership. Collaborative practitioner research opens up the possibility for practitioners to position themselves as knowledge producers and to revitalize the knowledge base that informs teacher education in the academy. In supporting this move, academics need to position themselves as resource gathers and co-learners thus opening a third space for knowledge production. The challenges for the profession are how to fund and effectively disseminate collaborative practitioner research and how to draw it into dialogue with other forms of research.

Implementing Culture Change in Nursing Homes: An Adaptive Leadership Framework

To describe key adaptive challenges and leadership behaviors to implement culture change for person-directed care. The study design was a qualitative, observational study of nursing home staff perceptions of the implementation of culture change in each of 3 nursing homes. We conducted 7 focus groups of licensed and unlicensed nursing staff, medical care providers, and administrators. Questions explored perceptions of facilitators and barriers to culture change. Using a template organizing style of analysis with immersion/crystallization, themes of barriers and facilitators were coded for adaptive challenges and leadership. Six key themes emerged, including relationships, standards and expectations, motivation and vision, workload, respect of personhood, and physical environment. Within each theme, participants identified barriers that were adaptive challenges and facilitators that were examples of adaptive leadership. Commonly identified challenges were how to provide person-directed care in the context of extant rules or policies or how to develop staff motivated to provide person-directed care. Implementing culture change requires the recognition of adaptive challenges for which there are no technical solutions, but which require reframing of norms and expectations, and the development of novel and flexible solutions. Managers and administrators seeking to implement person-directed care will need to consider the role of adaptive leadership to address these adaptive challenges.

Dimensions of Academic Leadership as Predictors of Leadership Capabilities and Competence of Deans and Department Chairs in Northern Mindanao

Supporting the new international agenda for higher education founded on building leadership capacity for academic quality, the study examined the capabilities and competencies necessary to lead this transformation in higher education. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the perspectives of 114 deans and department heads in five universities determined the multidimensional nature and dynamics of academic leadership roles in higher education. The five dimensions of academic leadership are leadership work, academic context, leadership effectiveness, leadership support, and leadership capability and competence. This study found that the academic leaders demonstrated a strong positive role behavior. The hallmarks of the Philippine Higher Education leadership experience that characterize distinctly the deans and chairs were as follows: a team management style for their highest value on tasks and people, an adaptive leadership in coping with social and competitive pressures, an outcomes-based leadership with highest performance standards on effective implementation and learning and teaching outcomes, a strong skill-approach leadership with role-specific competencies as the key leadership capability, and high commitment to leadership development highly engaged in formal leadership development activities. Issues needing serious attention were on academic context, networking, external accountability, financial performance outcomes, of self-managed and informal learning, and decisive and diagnostic capabilities. Academic leadership varied significantly between academic roles on leadership work and leadership effectiveness, indicating that the academic leaders differed by role behavior and role expectations. Academic leadership also varied significantly between sectors on support for leadership development, indicating that academic leaders differ by types of universities. The study also validated an emerging academic leadership capability and competency framework of the deans and chairs with leadership support and academic context having significant positive regression weights on leadership capability and competence. The predictors contributed more to competencies than to capabilities, and most to cognitive capabilities and personal capabilities, and least to interpersonal capabilities. Keywords - academic leadership, personal and interpersonal capabilities, competencies, academic context, Philippine higher education

"Collectivist Analysis of Adaptive Leadership, Interaction, and Cliques on Organizational Capacity"

The thesis of this mixed methods analysis proposes that organizational functions are described more adequately and fully as collective, intra-influence group dynamics than as activities of individuals. Three dynamics affecting the capacity of an organization to function effectively are proposed: adaptive leadership, or agents actively leading each other to process information; network interaction; and cliques. We used qualitative interviews, dynamic network analysis, and response surface methodology to analyze data from an organization in the education industry. The analysis found that the capacity of the network to process task-related information was significantly affected by the vibrancy of cliques and by adaptive leadership across a network. Interaction was mediated by the actions of cliques. Implications for research and for practice are provided.

A Moderated Mediation Model of Sensing-intuition Preference and Adaptive Performance

Uncertain environment calls for adaptive leadership. The present study proposed and tested a moderated mediation model of the relationship between leaders' preference for acquiring information (sensing vs. intuition) and leaders’ adaptive performance, in which leaders’ sensing-intuition preference related to leaders’ adaptive performance through transformational leadership, as moderated by state uncertainty. Using a sample of 227 leaders in China, we found that (1) sensing-intuition preference positively predicted leaders’ adaptive performance; (2) transformational leadership partially mediated the effect of sensing-intuition preference on leaders’ adaptive performance; and (3) state uncertainty moderated the mediational relationship between leaders’ sensing-intuition preference, transformational leadership and adaptive performance. Theoretical contributions, practical implications and future directions were discussed.

Communication about life-sustaining therapy: insights from the Adaptive Leadership Framework.

Effective provider and caregiver communication is central to quality care during treatment for life-threatening illnesses. The study aim was to analyze communication patterns between providers and a parent of an infant with a life-threatening disease using the Adaptive Leadership Framework, which is an activity that involves mobilizing others to adapt to a difficult situation. A secondary analysis was conducted on one case using 23 interviews with providers and mother of an infant diagnosed with Hurler's syndrome. The interviews focused on decision-making challenges in regard to the infant's treatment and were conducted over a 1-year period (pre-transplant, study entry, monthly, after a life-threatening event or substantial change in treatment and at 1-year post enrollment). Content analysis was used to identify and categorize communication patterns using concepts from the Adaptive Leadership Framework. Infant illness events and parent-provider caregiving were chronicled across a 1-year trajectory. Despite the life-threatening nature of Hurler's disease, the parent and providers did not discuss palliative care or end-of-life. The parent sought direction and answers from the providers. The Adaptive Leadership Framework suggested how communication approaches were often mismatched with the needs of the parent. The results of the study accentuate the need to improve communication between provider and parents about end-of-life for their child. Adaptive Leadership illuminates how providers can influence a parent's behavior when facing a challenging situation. This study suggests that Adaptive Leadership is a useful framework to guide research about healthcare communication in dealing with challenging issues.

Adaptive Group Formation in Multirobot Systems

Multirobot systems (MRSs) are capable of solving task complexity, increasing performance in terms of maximizing spatial/temporal/radio coverage or minimizing mission completion time. They are also more reliable than single-robot systems as robustness is increased through redundancy. Many applications such as rescue, reconnaissance, and surveillance and communication relaying require the MRS to be able to self-organize the team members in a decentralized way. Group formation is one of the benchmark problems in MRS to study self-organization in these systems. This paper presents a hybrid approach to group formation problem in multi-robot systems. This approach combines the efficiency of the cellular automata as finite state machine, the interconnectivity of the virtual grid and its bonding technique, and last but not least the decentralization of the adaptive dynamic leadership.

Sustaining Collective Action in Urbanizing China

AbstractIn recent years there has been a proliferation of scholarship on protests and other forms of collective action in China. Important insights have been gained into how conflicts between social groups and local governments begin, which strategies and instruments protesters apply, and under which circumstances protests are likely to succeed or fail. However, comparatively little is known about the mobilizing structures and how such collective action can be sustained over a long period of time, in some instances over several years. Such perseverance would be remarkable even in a democracy, but it is more so in an authoritarian system where the risks of participating in collective action are higher and the chances to succeed much smaller. This article compares the development of public protests in two research locations and identifies four factors instrumental to overcoming the formidable challenges of sustaining collective action in China: the continuing existence of substantial grievances; the re-activation of strong social ties; the presence of unifying frames; and an adaptive protest leadership. The comparison shows that the last factor is particularly crucial: while the two villages were similar in all other respects, leadership in village B was far more adaptive than in village A, which goes a long way towards explaining why collective action could be sustained twice as long in village B.

Inquiry in Action for Leadership in Turbulent Times

This article discusses the theory and practices associated with a methodology for leadership capacity development that utilizes Collaborative Developmental Action Inquiry to support adults in understanding the connections between transformative learning and adaptive leadership. Discussion is focused on transformative learning, ways of knowing, or action logics and single-, double-, and triple-loop learning.

A qualitative investigation of community health nurses’ adaptation to systems change

Background: The implementation of the newly formed First Nations Health Authority presents opportunities and challenges for the expanded role of the Community Health Nurses (CHNs) who work with the First Nations communities in British Columbia. A clear theoretical approach will assist these changes to increase the leadership capacity of these CHNs. Purpose : The purpose of this abstract is to present an evidence-based approach in a qualitative study to enhance leadership knowledge and skills for the CHNs and support their expanded role. This approach will encompass quantum leadership theory and the complex adaptive leadership model. Implications : The imminent proposed system changes create an urgent need to provide increased clarity in the identified body of CHNs' roles and responsibilities. The author hopes the proposed study will discover an emergent shared vision of role-clarity and an empowered voice to speak out constructively for CHNs and for the First Nations Communities. Conclusions : This oral presentation of this thesis study hopes to present a compelling rationale to foster leadership for CHNs to work at full scope and develop greater clarity in all domains. Participants in this session will learn about key components of the proposed study and how this author hopes augment the CHN’s engagement in organizational change. This approach will be presented as it relates to the current situation in British Columbia, and how the new information generated by this study can be utilized and adapted in public/community/community health across Canada.

Social Entrepreneurship:A Key to Societal Transformation-An Exploratory Study

It is widely accepted that Government and the conventional entrepreneurs cannot adequately meet all citizens' social needs especially in developing countries, hence the need for social entrepreneurship to fill this gap. Social entrepreneurs' are persons who create and manage innovative entrepreneurial organizations or ventures whose primary mission is the social change and development. Social entrepreneurship combines the resourcefulness of traditional entrepreneurship with a mission to change society. It offers insights that stimulate ideas for more socially acceptable and sustainable business strategies and organizational forms. This study provides a comparative analysis of five cases of social entrepreneurships that have been widely recognized as successful in India. The paper suggests factors associated with successful social entrepreneurship that leads to significant changes in the social and economic contexts for poor and marginalized groups. In this study propositions about core innovations, leadership qualities, organizational arrangements and scaling up in social entrepreneurship that produces social transformation leverage have been analyzed. The study recognized the differences across the 5 cases in their innovation forms. In addition, capacities for bridging and adaptive leadership appeared to be present in most successful initiatives. Two initiatives SEWA and SPARC were characterized by both high reach and high transformational impacts that were achieved through many organizational arrangements.

Developing DNP Students as Adaptive Leaders: A Key Strategy in Transforming Health Care

The success of graduates with a doctor of nursing practice (DNP) degree in transforming health care will depend significantly on their leadership ability to think strategically, innovate, and engage stakeholders in meaningful system improvement. Known as adaptive work, these graduates will need a portfolio of adaptive leadership skills that prepare them to move health care from a volume-driven to value-based system. This article describes development of a core DNP leadership course in a postmaster's point of entry DNP program at an academic health science center school of nursing. The course, designed as DNP students' initial step on their professional development journey to becoming adaptive leaders capable of driving transformative change, created an alternative lens for students to undertake strategic adaptive change initiatives within themselves and their organizations.

Finding your way through EOL challenges in the ICU using Adaptive Leadership behaviours: A qualitative descriptive case study

Using the Adaptive Leadership framework, we describe behaviours that providers used while interacting with family members facing the challenges of recognising that their loved one was dying in the ICU. In this prospective pilot case study, we selected one ICU patient with end-stage illness who lacked decision-making capacity. Participants included four family members, one nurse and two physicians. The principle investigator observed and recorded three family conferences and conducted one in-depth interview with the family. Three members of the research team independently coded the transcripts using a priori codes to describe the Adaptive Leadership behaviours that providers used to facilitate the family's adaptive work, met to compare and discuss the codes and resolved all discrepancies. We identified behaviours used by nurses and physicians that facilitated the family's ability to adapt to the impending death of a loved one. Examples of these behaviours include defining the adaptive challenges for families and foreshadowing a poor prognosis. Nurse and physician Adaptive Leadership behaviours can facilitate the transition from curative to palliative care by helping family members do the adaptive work of letting go. Further research is warranted to create knowledge for providers to help family members adapt.

Leadership Learning through Student-Centered and Inquiry-Focused Approaches to Teaching Adaptive Leadership

This qualitative study examines student learning about leadership across three sections of a capstone course in an undergraduate leadership minor. Qualitative methods were informed by exploratory case study analysis and phenomenology. Student-centered and inquiry-focused pedagogical approaches, including case-inpoint, action inquiry, and problem-based learning, informed classroom teaching and the classroom environment. Engaged in pedagogy steeped in a balance of challenge and support, students gained an increased sense of self, clarity of purpose and vocation, and integration of their leadership practices in and out of the classroom. Students’ understandings of the concept of leadership were also broadened; they recognized the importance of diverse perspectives and roles, began to understand leadership as systemic and interdependent, and emphasized relationship building. Findings suggest three prominent experiences as contributing to students’ learning – reflection, feedback, and engaging in the group process. Implications for leadership education are discussed and areas for future research are identified.

Cultivating Engaged Leadership Through a Learning Collaborative: Lessons From Primary Care Renewal in Oregon Safety Net Clinics

The aim of this study was to explore how learning collaboratives cultivate leadership skills that are essential for implementing patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs). We conducted an ethnographic evaluation of a payor-incentivized PCMH implementation in Oregon safety net clinics, known as Primary Care Renewal. Analyses primarily drew on in-depth interviews with organizational leaders who were involved in the initiative. We solicited perspectives on the history, barriers, facilitators, and other noteworthy factors related to the implementation of PCMH. We reviewed and summarized transcripts and created and applied a coding dictionary to identify emergent leadership themes. We reviewed field notes from clinic site visits and observations of learning collaborative activities for additional information on the role of engaged leadership. Interview data suggested that organizations followed a similar, sequential process of Primary Care Renewal implementation having 2 phases-inspiration and implementation-and that leaders needed and learned different leadership skills in each phase. Leaders reported that collaborative learning opportunities were critical for developing engaged leadership skills during the inspiration phase of transformation. Facilitative and modeling aspects of engaged leadership were most important for codesigning a vision and plan for change. Adaptive leadership skills became more important during the implementation phase, when specific operational and management skills were needed to foster standardization and spread of the Primary Care Renewal initiative throughout participating clinics. The PCMH has received much attention as a way to reorganize and potentially improve primary care. Documenting steps and stages for cultivating leaders with the vision and skills to transform their organizations into PCMHs may offer a useful roadmap to other organizations considering a similar transformation.

On the Similarities of Peace of Mind and Peace in the Valley

This article examines the practice of organization consultation using the adaptive leadership approach through a case example of a large system intervention in a peacemaking project in Nepal. The authors define core activities of the Adaptive Leadership model and provide parallels to psychodynamic group psychotherapy theory and technique that demonstrate how group therapists can apply their expertise to larger systems and arenas beyond the group therapy office.

Summary of the AAPG–SPE–SEG Hedberg Research Conference on “Fundamental Controls on Flow in Carbonates”

A joint AAPG–Society of Petroleum Engineers–Society of Exploration Geophysicists Hedberg Research Conference was held in Saint-Cyr sur Mer, France, on July 8 to 13, 2012, to review current research and explore future research directions related to improved production from carbonate reservoirs. Eighty-seven scientists from academia and industry (split roughly equally) attended for five days. A primary objective for the conference was to explore novel connections among different disciplines (primarily within geoscience and reservoir engineering) as a way to define new research opportunities. Research areas represented included carbonate sedimentology and stratigraphy, structural geology, geomechanics, hydrology, reactive transport modeling, seismic imaging (including four-dimensional seismic, tomography, and seismic forward modeling), geologic modeling and forward modeling of geologic processes, petrophysics, statistical methods, numerical methods for simulation, reservoir engineering, pore-scale processes, in-situ flow experiments (e.g., x-ray computed tomography), visualization, and methods for data interaction. The conference was organized into four thematic sessions on the first two days (fundamentals, measurement and detection of flow on laboratory to field scales, uncertainty and prediction, and novel modeling and simulation techniques); a field trip on the third day was preceded by a dedicated poster session that introduced the geology of the area, whereas the ice breaker featured guest lectures on innovation and complex adaptive leadership, as well as a panel discussion. Given the challenge of cross-disciplinary communication, delegates were encouraged to adopt a beginner's mind, challenging the status quo and exploring basic questions that the establishment might have overlooked. Stepping back and slowing down to promote effective conversations among different disciplines was emphasized upfront. Several delegates noted that technical jargon was a significant barrier to novel thinking in the way that it impeded effective communication among disciplines during the meeting. Cross-disciplinary interactions were encouraged by several further mechanisms, representing a shift from more common Hedberg Conference formats. Overall, the …